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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!elroy!cit-vax!tim
From: tim@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Timothy L. Kay)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.apple,comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sys.hp,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Apple Challenges HP New Wave, MS-Windows, Potentially OS/2 PM
Keywords: Apple Mac HP Microsoft Windows OS/2 New Wave Frivolous Litigation
Message-ID: <5994@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: 1 Apr 88 20:33:12 GMT
References: <5480@well.UUCP> <5492@well.UUCP> <535@nunki.usc.edu> <2706@tekigm2.TEK.COM> <20952@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Reply-To: tim@ducat.UUCP ()
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 45

>  means Rob Warnock
>> means Philip E Staub

>>Don't laugh. As I recall, either RCA or GE has a patent on the use of CRTs
>>for display of alpahnumeric characters generated as a scanned dot matrix.

>This is TRUE! ...as we learned at Fortune Systems a few years ago. And by
>the way, it's RCA, and the patent covers virtually any scanned dot matrix.
>If you make video displays, eventually RCA comes a'knocking...

Now we get  to an interesting point.    The manufacturer of the  video
display isn't violating the patent!  You can  use a  video display for
purposes other than the display of a "scanned dot matrix."  Therefore,
it seems  to me that  RCA doesn't have a case  against  video  display
manufacturers.

(It is some what like the music industry trying to get a tariff on the
sale of *all* blank audio cassettes because *some* of them are used to
infringe on copyrights.)

The real infringers are the  companies that  manufacture video display
*cards*.

But suppose a company like Hercules had left out  text mode from their
card.  Then you  would   have something that  can   only be  used  for
graphics.  Until, of course, somebody writes  a driver that allows the
Hercules card to be  used  to  display text.   In  this case, who  has
violated the patent?   Some  hacker in high  school could have written
the software and posted it to a network.  If  1,000  people use it, is
this hacker liable for damages with respect  to 1,000 counts of patent
infringement?

In a   similar  vane, I  don't see   how   software patents    can  be
enforceable.    As   I  understand   it, the  AT     command  set  for
Hayes-compatible  modems is   not copyrighted,  but the  use of +++ is
patented.   Suppose a  company built a  modem that allowed the user to
download his  own program to   the on-board  processor.  If  the modem
manufacturer didn't have Hayes  compatibility, but  the user wrote and
downloaded  a program   to  implement   Hayes    compatibility, is  he
infringing  on the  +++  patent.   If   the same user distributed  his
program to  the net,  does the situation change?   If the manufacturer
gave  the program away  for free (perhaps  with  source  code, perhaps
without it), does the situation change?

Tim